#tullynallycastle garden #Ireland is pretty nice!

Yes, but OUR Supreme Court goes to eleven!"

June 28 & 30 - In Washington D.C. and across Europe, take part in demos with @womensmarch @FamiliesBelong & @DemsAbroad to protest the ongoing human rights violationscreated by @realdonaldtrump racist policies and staff. RSVP: https://t.co/16LjUXKxWR — Dems Abroad Austria (@DemsAustria) June 27, 2018

So don’t be a sucker. Blog entry reposted from Trump’s first attempt at misleading America. “Don’t Be a Sucker” was designed to warn pre-internet moviegoers about the dangers of being taken in by a populist demagogue. It’s seventy five years old, so it barely predates Don the Con. It also perfectly encapsulates a what he is, and always has been, a dyed-in-the-wool conman. ...

This is entirely predictable, preventable, illegal and deplorable. This is what racism and fear-mongering creates.

“Donald Trump’s presidency threatens much of what is good about this country.” Considering the content of this book, the investigation into Trump and his obstruction of justice, and the rumored pardoning of Scooter Libby who was himself convicted for obstruction, perjury and lying to investigators, any supporter or member of the GOP has got to ask themselves just exactly what level of criminality they are comfortable with. You don’t get a pass for merely liking GOP policies, because civic duty now requires collective action to support our system of government and the rule of law. The RNC has made its decision already. They are going to the mats against the Department of Justice. ...

Washington Post: Órban wins Third Term Fidesz makes bogeymen out of people fleeing war, famine, poverty and hopelessness making it’s citizens fear for their Christianity, itself a dying religion. As a result they cede their own liberty, freedom of speech, freedom to assemble and rights to petition the courts for a redress of grievances. This strategy, to wage a campaign based on self-generated fantasies, pushed into the minds of citizens in an environment of limited news resources is the surest way to degrade a democracy. Hungary as a Democracy is at its lowest point since the fall of Communism. But don’t worry! The “Viktator” has a lovely view of it all from his home overlooking his football stadium. Life is grand at the top, that it sits atop a wobbley mountain of corruption is of no importance. ...

Just was informed by my dad about this: “In a little-noticed 6-3 vote today, the House Administration Committee voted along party lines to eliminate the Election Assistance Commission, which helps states run elections and is the only federal agency charged with making sure voting machines can’t be hacked. The EAC was created after the disastrous 2000 election in Florida as part of the Help America Vote Act to rectify problems like butterfly ballots and hanging chads. (Republicans have tried to kill the agency for years.) The Committee also voted to eliminate the public-financing system for presidential elections dating back to the 1970s. This cannot be tolerated, especially at a time when our voting systems are still under attack. Its criminal. ...

** Let’s remember in this time of rising authoritarianism one of Martin Luther King’s many important statements on oppression: ** “To accept passively an unjust system is to cooperate with that system; thereby the oppressed become as evil as the oppressor,”, King wrote in his essay “Three Ways of Meeting Oppression.” We are obligated to resist as much as the oppressor is obligated to hear our protests. And so we resist.. ...

Great quote from How Democracies Die. By Levitsky & Ziblatt — “Collective abdication - the transfer of power to a leader who threatens Democracy — usually flows from one of two sources. The first is the misguided belief that an authoritarian can be controlled or tamed. The second is what sociologist Ivan Ermakoff calls “ideological collusion,” in which the authoritarian’s agenda overlaps sufficiently with that of mainstream politicians that abdication is desirable or at least preferable to the alternatives.” ...